Friday Check-In: What is 'War' good for?

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This week's Friday Check-In newsletter coming up just as soon as I get you a harpoon...

In The Twilight Zone zone

The Twilight Zone debuted 67 years ago tonight, naturally on the same day as a solar eclipse. We're also now only 11 days away from the release of Serling: A Journey Into The Twilight Zone with TV's First Visionary, still available for preorder wherever books are sold (and you can still get a free bonus essay on my favorite Twilight Zone episode if you preorder). Most of the podcasts and other interviews I'm doing will be rolling out over the next few weeks. But here's one that's a Star-Ledger reunion, as I talked with my former colleague Stephen Whitty for NJArts.net, the terrific (and unfortunately soon to be defunct) website run by our former colleague Jay Lustig:

I wanted to remind you of a few in-person things happening if you're in the New York/New Jersey area:

On Thursday, October 8, I'm going to be at New York Comic-Con to moderate a Brooklyn Nine-Nine retrospective panel, and I'll be stopping by Hachette's booth (#3445) to sign a limited number of copies. So you can not only get your hands on a copy several days before the rest of the public, but it will be signed. (And, if I happen to be at the booth at the time, I can personalize it for you.) If you're in the Javits Center and happen to spot a tall bearded guy cosplaying as a Knicks fan, say hi!
I'll be at Words bookstore in Maplewood the night of October 14, for what will essentially be a live (and unrecorded) episode of TV Is Good with Kathryn VanArendonk. She has threatened to hit me with a Rod Serling fact that I somehow don't know despite all my research. Can she deliver? Only one way to find out!
I'll be at The Paley Center on October 15 to talk about Serling's career with museum curator Jason Lynch, who helped me watch some of the more obscure items from Rod's long long list of credits.

I imagine Jason and I will be spending some time talking about the strange third act of Serling's career, where the man who once railed against the evils of television advertising started narrating or appearing in more commercials than Jon Hamm does today:

Hope to see some of you in person soon!

Catching up

Here's what I've published since last Friday's newsletter:

I recapped the penultimate episode of Lanterns, where the holographic version of Hal Jordan attempted to figure out what happened to the flesh-and-blood version:

In a new episode of TV Is Good, Kathryn and I took an expansive view of fall TV shows we find interesting, then talked with Lynette Rice about her new book ER: The Oral History:

I took my usual Ask Alan mailbag feature out from behind the bonus tier paywall for a free edition focused on the life and work of the aforementioned Rod Serling:

I recapped the penultimate episode of Ted Lasso Season Four, which continued to have some high points involving the team, and some extreme low points involving the legacy characters, including the most embarrassing bit of product integration I can remember in a long, long time:

I recapped the latest Slow Horses, as Olivia Cooke quickly got back into rhythm with Jack Lowden as the show's Greatest hits season reached its midpoint:

I reviewed Netflix's new East of Eden adaptation, with Zoe Kazan tackling the same John Steinbeck novel that her grandfather Elia made into a famous James Dean movie:

What's next?

Among the things to look for around here over the next week or so:

Finale recaps for Lanterns and Ted Lasso, and a recap of the next Slow Horses.
A new TV Is Good episode where Kathryn and I talk about East of Eden and then look back to the classic Old West miniseries Lonesome Dove.
A review of Cupertino, the new CBS legal procedural from Good Wife/Good Fight/Evil creators Robert and Michelle King.
For What Else Is Alan Watching? bonus tier subscribers, a non-Serling installment of Ask Alan; send questions to alan@whatsalanwatching.com.
I didn't get Scrubs screeners in time to write about it for this week, so look for some thoughts on the new season next week.
Also, yesterday was the 20th anniversary of Dexter's premiere, and tomorrow will be the 20th anniversary for Friday Night Lights. The plan is for me to do more tribute pieces, but those two will have to wait for sometime later this fall when my schedule clears up a bit. That said, if you want to read something FNL anniversary-related by me immediately, I interviewed showrunner Jason Katims for Emmy magazine:

At the movies

Matthew McConaughey and Angelina LookingGlass in *The Rivals of Amziah King*

Earlier this week on VOD, I watched The Rivals of Amziah King, a movie written and directed by Andrew Patterson that dares to ask the question: "What if there was a heist movie, but it was about bees, and it also had amazing bluegrass music and a gigantic heart, but was also a revenge thriller and also a hangout comedy?" You know, that old chestnut. The first half of the movie is incredible — the kind of film you want to climb into and live in for a while. The second half isn't quite as effective, but the spell cast by the opening lingered throughout, and I'm really glad I watched it.
One of my kids has been doing a weekly movie-watching challenge this year. The latest challenge was to watch a movie on physical media, which of course meant we watched my DVD of 2000's High Fidelity, with John Cusack as a lovelorn Chicago record store owner. Several thoughts: 1)I love how clear-eyed the movie is about how much Rob sucks, and how funny Cusack and company are able to make him. 2)I will never not smile broadly when I watch the moment where Rob delcares, "I will now sell five copies of The Three EPs by The Beta Band." 3)In 2000, only alt-comedy nerds had any idea who Jack Black was, much less that he could sing like, well, Jack Black. So the moment when Barry's band — which we are warned over and over must suck — takes the stage and he starts absolutely shredding on a Marvin Gaye cover? One of the louder responses I've ever heard in a movie theater. 4)The movie cuts a lot from the book, as all adaptations do. The thing I miss most (other than the scene where the bitter divorcée tries to give away her ex's record collection to Rob, which you can at least find on YouTube) is the argument where Laura complains to Rob that his mix tapes for her were always full of songs he thought she should like, rather than ones she actually liked. That's the perfect set-up for Rob's last monologue in the movie, which still works because the song is so good, but I think it would hit even better with even one earlier line of dialogue from Laura to that effect. 4)The Hulu series, with Zoe Kravitz as Rob, and a pre-Oscar Da'Vine Joy Randolph as a new version of Barry, was wonderful, and I'm exasperated we didn't get a second season of it. Which means we also didn't get Randolph's version of the Marvin Gaye scene. (Though we did get a whole episode based on the divorcée scene.) It's nonetheless well worth watching.
My former Uproxx colleagues Keith Phipps and Mike Ryan co-host a podcast called Ford Focus, where they talk about all of Harrison Ford's movies, one episode at a time. They had me on the show this week to talk about Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade:

This is not a review (or is it?): War on HBO

James McArdle, Sienna Miller, and Phoebe Fox in *War*

Periodically, I'll watch only an episode or two of a show — enough for me to form an opinion, but not enough of a sample for me to feel strong enough in that opinion to write a real review. The new HBO legal drama War falls into a kind of liminal space between review and not-review. I only watched the first three episodes (out of eight provided). While obviously a lot could change my feelings if/when I get to the rest, I felt more confident than usual with this kind of sample size. Take what follows with all the grains of salt you want.

War was created by George Kay, the man behind Netflix's Lupin with Omar Sy and Apple's Hijack with Idris Elba. Here, he's working with a different Wire alum in the form of Dominic West, who plays a tech billionaire (his fortune was built on what basically sounds like "nice Twitter") wrapped up in an ugly divorce from his movie star wife, played by Sienna Miller(*). The show, though, is more interested in their attorneys, who work at two rival firms: one an old-money establishment, best represented by the sneering disdain of Pip Torrens as a lawyer who is of course named St. John Smallwood; the other a relative underdog, led by spouses Serena (Phoebe Fox) and Nicholas (James McArdle). The plan, in success, is for the lawyers to stick around, with a new case and new clients for each season.

(*) Miller's son from a previous relationship is played by Aran Murphy (Cillian's son), who's also currently playing Sharon Horgan's son on Youth. It's the Aran-aissance on HBO!

I enjoyed the first seasons of Lupin and Hijack and quickly lost interest when both returned. But those were high-concept shows (Hijack in particular) that didn't necessarily lend themselves to being an ongoing concern. War is much more a traditional legal procedural blended with a streaming serialized format, like if Good Wife or a David E. Kelley show devoted eight episodes in a row to one case. It's slick, has a lot of performers who understand the assignment (see also Celia Imrie as the barrister at Serena's firm, and Archie Renaux as a cocky young lawyer with complicated motivations), and relishes the gamesmanship of it all. There are lots of scenes where the lawyers on one side lay out their latest plan to get over on their opponents, followed immediately by opposing counsel meeting and predicting something exactly like what the first firm is trying. Everybody's smart.

It's not deep, and it could all fall apart by the end. But through its first three hours, War (a joint venture between HBO and Sky Television) delivers what it says on the tin.

That's it for today! What did everybody else think?